Years ago, when Yahoo chat rooms were cool and Netscape was still the browser of choice, there was a computer commercial extolling the virtues of a certain brand. The commercial showed two college students writing their final papers before graduation. The student with the brand name computer finished his paper, saved it, and went to bed. The student using the competitor’s computer finished his paper, tried to save, and started screaming as the computer went into the ever-terrifying Blue Screen of Death, deleting his entire paper. Cut to ten years later: the brand name student is working a business job with a corner window office, while the student with the competitor’s computer is washing said windows for a living.


Despite being aired over a decade ago, the spot brings up one very good point: just how dependent are we on technology today?

Think about it. A few years ago, to get directions to a given place, you’d look them up in the phone book and either call them on your land line and ask for directions from a given landmark or attempt to find them in the city map printed in the front of said phone book. Today, even looking them up on Mapquest or going to the company’s website to find directions is considered archaic: cutting-edge technology demands a smartphone or a GPS unit to give you step-by-step directions as you drive.

For another example people my age work with nearly every day, take writing papers. No matter how quickly you write, going at it longhand takes forever and leaves your hand cramped and hurting afterwards. Typewriters speed the process along nicely but are plagued by stuck keys, not to mention that a single misspelled word or missed comma requires retyping an entire page and makes the editing process long and arduous. Computers have revolutionized the very idea of writing: misspelled words are easily fixed or even corrected automatically, entire paragraphs and pages can be rearranged with a single click, and a writer can finish editing their work in its entirety before the first copy is printed.

Technology has made everything faster and easier. Listening to a device’s instructions instead of having to look at written directions while driving is safer for the driver and everyone around them. Word processing is quicker, easier, and more easily sharable than handwritten copies of a document. There is, however, one very ominous question looming over this commonplace dependence on digital devices: what if that technology fails?

I spy with my little eye a Blue Screen of Death.
If we’re to believe the commercial, then the short answer is to make a career out of washing windows. Those of us who would rather not hang hundreds of feet above the pavement every day or simply have marketable skills in other areas do what most everyone does when faced with a technological crisis in this modern day and age: head over to the local Best Buy or Apple store, talk to a member of the Geek Squad or a Genius, pay through the nose to get our essential little device working again, and attempt to stay calm during the process. It’s a discouraging little waltz; it’s expensive; it’s the reason people buy new electronics in the first place. After all, new products are guaranteed perfect, and refurbished electronics obviously had problems before and will have problems again, right?

Wrong on both accounts, actually. Not everything that comes out of the factory is perfect. For example, take the most common problem with the Xbox 360, commonly referred to as the Red Ring or the Red Ring of Death. A console experiencing this error will have red lights around the power button light up, indicating that the console needs service for one of a multitude of problems, ranging from failures in video output to audio errors to the console simply not working anymore.

That late night howl of agony probably came from your next-door neighbor when his XBox 360 did this.
A September 2009 survey conducted by Seattlepi showed the failure rate for Xbox 360s to be at 54%. That’s right: over half these consoles have keeled over and died because of errors inherent in the unit itself. Errors like this pretty much shatter the notion that every bit of machinery that rolls off the factory shelves is perfect.

Refurbished products, on the other hand, have an awful reputation. People regard them with the view that a product, once broken, cannot be repaired to any level of satisfaction. This is not entirely true: the quality of the repairs depends on the skill of the repairman. If the repairman has no idea what they’re doing, does an awful job, or fails to test the product before selling it, then odds are the product probably can’t be trusted. Give that same device to a skilled repairman who does a thorough job and tests his work before sending it out, however, and that device will work just like if not better than new. It all depends on the person doing the repairs and how well they handle the technology.

We’ve seen that our society is technologically dependent, and we’ve all known the heartbreak and horror when the technology we depend on in our everyday lives fails. How, we ask, do we keep it from failing? Aside from the common sense tenets of technology care – keep it dry, perform regular maintenance, and don’t drop it – the best way to prevent tech fail is to shop smart. Go to the people you trust, and if you’d like to save a few bucks and get the best quality for what you do spend, go to the people you trust to refurbish the technology you want. Find someone who knows what they’re doing, who consistently performs well, and who tests their refurbished tech to make sure it performs well. Guarantees and quick shipping don’t hurt, either.

Don’t know anybody like that? Well, I have a recommendation or two.

Have any tech horror stories? How about the time your dog chewed your TV cord, or your neighbor’s kid dropped your iPhone in the toilet? What about great tech service stories? Let’s hear them!

Katherine

Deal of the Day: Magellan Maestro 3100 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator, for when Mapquest and the phone book just aren't working for you.

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